I picked up Varjak Paw mainly because it's fully illustrated by Dave McKean. The illustrations are wonderful and there are PLENTY of them throughout the book. But I ended up not only enjoying the illustrations but enjoying the story as well.
Varjak Paw is a house cat, a Mesopotamian Blue. He lives with his mother and father and brothers and sisters and is by far the least popular of the family. Varjak has always loved hearing stories of the great Jalal, the "ancient one", the first Mesopotamian Blue to come to America from what I gathered. His tales include stories of the outside world. Varjak and his family have never seen the outside world. They've never seen anything but the Contessa's house that they live in and the backyard. Now, however, a new man has come into the house after the Contessa has disappeared and with him are two mysterious black cats that are up to no good. In order to get rid of them, someone is going to have to go to the outside world and find something called a "dog" that should scare the cats away. Varjak decides that he will take on this task.
We follow Varjak on his adventures as he first leaves his sheltered life and enters the outside world where he meets street cats and encounters the big city. He learns the ways of Jalal, the elder through dream sequences that add a very nice eastern philosophy touch to the book.
Overall, this was quite an enjoyable book and I'd recommend it to readers young and old. I have a couple of people that I think I'm going to buy this one for as a Christmas gift mainly for the Dave McKean illustrations which are really great! There's a second book out in the Varjak Paw series as well. If you're looking for another great review of this book, check out Nymeth's!
